The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is taking steps to cut back on the harvesting of seafood to address what it claims is a dire need to preserve a marine species.

But state lawmakers, fishermen and others in the seafood industry say the move is unnecessary, that it is being based on “bad science” and that it will cripple the industry – doing perhaps irreparable harm to fishing communities in the process.

That, of course, echoes a long-standing argument between NOAA and the fishing industry. NOAA’s position is at the core of a federally recognized “economic disaster” within the Northeast groundfishery with the federal government supposedly shelling out $75 million in disaster aid, including direct aid to groundfishermen – who have yet to receive a dime of it.

But the latest declaration by NOAA and its National Marine Fisheries Service Division isn’t connected to groundfishing. This time, the good bureaucrats at Marine Fisheries have imposed a new rule designed to protect humpback and white whales – a mandate that prohibits lobster traps in an area stretching from Cape Cod Bay to Boston between Jan. 1 and April 30. That is just one more recipe for disaster for the Massachusetts and New England seafood economy.

At the core of the dispute is the claim by NOAA, the National Marine Fisheries Service and others that the whales traversing the seas not far from our coasts are increasingly at risk of becoming snared by the trap lines and other gear of lobster fishing as they surface and dive while foraging for food.

If there is hard science showing that the presence of lobster traps – and, for that matter, other fishing gear – in Massachusetts Bay, off Cape Cod Bay and even up into our neighboring Stellwagen Bank, harms the whales, then such a shutdown might have some context.

But NOAA hasn’t outlined the specific data showing the need for such action – just as its science wing hasn’t specified the data behind a potential new cut in cod limits that is awaiting “peer review” before the agency announces another hit on the already crippled groundfishing industry. And the fact that lobstermen – like the groundfishermen who fish for cod, flounder, halibut and sole – have not been allowed input into the supposed data behind this pending shutdown hasn’t helped NOAA’s scientific credibility.

Indeed, a letter sent last week to the NOAA officials by the bipartisan State House Coastal Caucus – a group of 44 Beacon Hill lawmakers – notes that efforts by lobstermen to protect whales from entanglement in traps have resulted in a near-elimination of whale fatalities, while the right whale population has grown from 263 in 1996 to more than 450 in 2009. That hardly indicates any need for a lobstering shutdown.